Pliable sheets of sealable materials are commonly used in many industrial, environmental and civil construction applications, particularly within the roofing industry. One method for sealing and/or joining such sealable materials in the roofing industry may be heat sealing. Typically, in a roofing application, large sheets of materials may be placed on the roof with their edges overlapping. For instance, a single-ply thermo-plastic sheet may often be utilized as a roofing membrane to prevent leakage of water through a roof. When using adhesive/bond or self-adhesive seals, the overlapping edges may be press-welded to one another. When using thermo-plastic materials, the overlapping edges may be heat welded to one another along or within the overlapping region. The heat sealing process may be performed manually by an individual who may separate the overlapping edges along the overlap and then may heat the separated edges, e.g., by directing hot air between the separated edges with a blow gun or hot air device. When heated sufficiently, the surfaces of the separated edges liquefy. The edges may then be pressed together to provide a seam or tack-weld between the overlapping edges, which seals the sheets together upon cooling. Typically a moveable compressing means, such as a hand roller, may be used to improve the quality of the seam by driving air bubbles out of the molten material and increasing the contact between the molten edges.
Once a seam has been formed between two membranes, the quality of the seam may be inspected using a seam tester, which is typically a tool separate from a seam roller. A typical seam tester may be L-shaped and may have a tapered, pointed tip, although it is not unknown for a seam tester to be relatively straight and taper to a point. After sealing two membranes together, the seam may be tested by attempting to insert the tip of the seam tester between the two membranes. In the event of a complete seam between the membranes, the tip of the seam tester will not slide between the now-sealed membranes. In contrast, if the tip of the seam tester does in fact slide between the membranes, the seam is not complete and the membranes must be reheated and sealed again.
Among the attempts at solving the problem of having a separate seam roller and seam tester are the apparatuses disclosed in U.S. Pat. Nos. D552,952 and D556,526, to Horner et al. This design is impractical in use, however, as individuals using such tools must repeatedly rotate the tool to perform either the seam rolling or seam testing function. As such, there is a likelihood that the tool may be dropped any time a user's grip on the tool is released, thereby reducing the efficiency of the seam rolling/testing process.
Furthermore, individuals using seam rollers typically store their tools in the rear pocket of their pants when the roller is not in use. The prior art designs encounter two difficulties in this regard. First, if the roller end of the prior art designs is inserted into a user's back pocket, the seam tester extends upward from the pocket and causes potential difficulty when an individual sits down, i.e. the seam tester may poke the individual in the back or damage the seat being sat upon. Secondly, the roller end of the prior art tools is significantly more massive than the seam tester end; if the seam tester end is placed in a user's back pocket, the tool has a tendency to fall out based on the relatively larger mass of the roller extending outside of the pocket.
Therefore, there exists in the art a need for a roofing tool, which may be stored in a user's rear pants pocket during periods of non-use, which allows a user to apply pressure to form a seam between sealable membranes and which also allows a user check the quality of such seams without releasing the tool or utilizing a separate tool to perform the seam forming and seam quality test functions.